Thanks kylemeister!

I know of Dvoretsky's comment, and i think you have the right book.  I didn't know that he was quoting from someone earlier.  Some of the best advice is old advice.

I have a friend (an IM) who says that you can't claim to be a master unless you create your own chess theory.  That is, you have to come up with new moves occasionally, and always be opinionated about lines.   

A master has every right, and perhaps even a duty to play lines that theory considers dubious.  That is because the master will have analysed these lines himself and come to the conclusion that these lines are either misevaluated or are rich enough to play anyway.

I've never been one to say that knowing too much is a bad thing.  Rather, if I am stuck playing only theoretical moves without really understanding the positions, then I need to get out and play more.  That is, I need to learn more about openings.

Both of these points go back to my blaming myself instead of the opening for any let-downs.   I will probably continue to play and over-analyse my opening repertoire, but reserve the right to gripe when chess seems unfair.

OK, I have to admit that previous experience with the Sicilian (with either colour) helps a lot. I can see that as I nowadays follow the exact opposite path than yours, i.e. I start to re-examine the Open Sicilian as White and my 'Black' experience with the defence helps more than any other source of knowledge.

However, a word of warning in case you are really planning to adopt the Najdorf. Spend some time to study the minimum required theory regarding 6. Bg5 (even if you follow the 'calmer' classical approach, i.e. 6. .. e6 & 7. .. Be7), since play is as sharp as it gets and just a good positional feeling is not enough.

Regarding the Najdorf I'll have to agree with TopNotch (and I'm not obsessed with opening theory  ).

Moreover, regarding your comment: Quote:
:

Playing the Najdorf as White demands you to know more or less 2 types of positions, and that is usually the d6/e6 and the d6/e5 centres.

Playing the Najdorf as Black demands you to know how to counter about 6-7 different set-ups (positional ones, opposite castling, Bishops here or there). You will also have the dilemma depending on White's 6th move on whether to prefer a Dragon, a Scheveningen or a Classical set-up, instead of a 'pure' Najdorf approach. The situation gets even worse if you add the different positions you need to know to cope with the Anti-Sicilians.

I suppose most of the above hold for the Dragon too, except maybe from the dilemma regarding Black's optimum set-up after White's 6th move: You will have to stick to the same ol' fianchetto!  

Quote:


Not according to the computer, and often my opponent in post-mortem. Though some opponents do the whole "I was winning the whole time" thing, most comment that they were probably worse. Very odd, probably because I rarely play in over the board tournaments (a few a year) and just need more experience or something. 

Edit: I just took out a chunk because I accidentally included part that was meant for another thread. 

Willempie wrote on 06/15/07 at 12:38:37:


Good advice unless you play the Dragon or Najdorf.

Tops

Heartily agree with Willempie.

Relax re: opening theory a little. Play through plenty of high quality games (GMs minimum, not IMs) in those variations to get ideas how to actually play the positions. 

Then come back to theory books. 

eg
French - Korchnoi, Uhlmann, assorted Armenians. 
KID: Nunn, Kasparov, Bronstein, Golubev, Gallagher, Radj, whomever
Benoni: Stein, Tal etc


As JonHecht said - yes the higher rated players will outplay you from slightly inferior positions, because they are better. What does 'better' mean  in practice? They have a greater understanding of a wider range of positions. Alternatively call it the vague 'experience', the more precise 'greater pattern recognition' or what have you.


My pet 'bad' variation. Played the budapest as a kid. Got a duff book on it, the blurb made it seem interesting -  was 11 or 12 and didnt know better. Finally my mum, who cant play (can set up the pieces tho) suggested that I stop playing whatever I was playing. Mum knows best, took up KID, never looked back.

So advice all you boys and girls - ask mother.

Willempie, 

I came to the same conclusion that you have about trying to be too theoretical.  When i play strong players who play into my "theory" I just can't help myself; I just have to play the line I think is best.

Therein lies the heart of my problem:  I like to play the "best" lines, even if they don't give the best practical results.

One of my most common opponents (a national master) plays 1.e4 c5 2.Nh3 (or 1...e6 2.Nh3) and still manages to win.  His opponents, myself included, get the better position out of the opening, but he is able to outplay us in the middlegame because he has specific attacking plans that he has worked out at home.

So against this player, I tend to lose from "better" positions.  There's really no point in spending hours upon hours working out how to beat the opening in cases like this, but I still tend to blame the opening rather than the resulting middlegame positions.

I can outplay opponents of similar strength if they don't respect the opening, but the higher level players tend to reach a theoretically inferior position and still outplay me.  My favorite variations aren't really letting me down so much as I am letting them down.

That's depressing.

Bravehop, 

I had the same issue when I played the Modern Benoni as Black.  I always felt that I was cheating somehow because I knew the opening was inferior to others and yet I never lost a serious game with it.  (I beat several players who were more than 300 rating points above me with it.)

I'm not sorry I gave it up, but I am even more glad that I studied it as Black.  The opening has had a minor revival and my studies have helped me to cope with some very difficult opponents because I knew where the problems lie.   

Perhaps the difficulty I have with my repertoire is that it's geared for playing against strong opponents (>2300 USCF), and those opponents are either wily enough to avoid my main lines or seem to understand the opening better than I do.

My main problems with my openings usually show up in main lines in which an opponent has played a theoretically sub-optimal move that I didn't study thoroughly enough beforehand.  My opponent plays well and gets a better position than he should have.   

I often blame myself for not taking advantage of my opponent's mistakes.

You can probably spot the mistake in my thinking already:

I talk about "sub-optimal" and what my opponent "should have" gotten out of the opening.  I really do believe in right and wrong and sometimes get caught trying to punish an opponent for playing incorrectly.  This is natural in chess, but after a certain level, the relative values of right and wrong are so blurry that trying to figure out what is best is a quixotic pursuit.

Strong opponents who know me will often play theoretically dubious moves in order to lure me into pushing too hard.   I don't really know what the remedy is.

Markovich wrote on 06/13/07 at 16:56:44:



I have exactly the same frustrations.  I started out playing both sides of the Slav at a time when no top GM played it regularly.  Then it became the most popular opening in chess (at least so it seemed) and lines were being created, refuted, resuscitated, and killed off again in the span of a few months.  There was no way I could keep up unless I decided to become a chess professional.


On the plus side, if I had decided to become a chess professional, I wouldn't have noticed our favorite restaurants closing because my wife would have left me!

I think I'll keep my wife, and keep on complaining about chess.

Smyslov_Fan wrote on 06/11/07 at 11:58:35:

I suggest opening a new thread in the open-sic section. I started playing it myself and would love to chime in on analysis of practical games. 

As to yourself I think that it may be very helpful to have other people who dont know you give comments. Maybe that way you'll find a common wrong mode of thought in the handling of your openings.

BtW I think it is very helpful with the Taimanov to also look at some games in related lines like the Schevy and Winawer.

Well, we all have some of those openings which we score badly with without really knowing why, don't we? The reasons could be many...

Maybe we haven't studied the opening enough.
Maybe we have only played it against strong players.
Maybe we blundered away a couple of games, where the opening wasn't really the problem.
Maybe the opening just doesn't suit our style.
Or maybe the opening is just bad.

In the two latter cases, the solution is obviously to stop playing that opening; in the other cases, it's not the opening itself that should be blamed. For some time, I was scoring badly with the Nimzo Indian, but when I tried to find the reason for it, looking at my opponent's ratings was an answer good enough...

Maybe you just overfocus? Ie you spend a big amount of time in preparing and during the game you are in deep thought about which plan to follow, but forget to "play chess".

Hello Smyslov_Fan,

It would be good to see some of those Taimanov games, if have got the time, and don't mind warning potential opponents. I would post some of my own games, but opponents have so far play anti-sicillians. 

Bye John S

JonHecht wrote on 06/11/07 at 03:48:52:


not sure if the minority attacks garante an advantage in the qgd

Maybe you just need to study minority attacks in more detail.